Sunday, January 27, 2013

In a classic psychology experiment by John Bargh of New York University students were shown a set of words associated with the elderly but not including the word 'elderly' - wrinkled, forgetful, blad grey, florida. These students were then asked to move to another room and they were timed in contrast to another set of students with randomly selected words. It was found that the suggestion of elderly caused the students to walk slower (!) This is known as the Florida Effect. Whilst most of the time we think that the toughts we are having are nobody else's but our own it is very easy for thoughts to cause behaviour because the mechanisms of our brain are automatic and they can be manipulated without our knowledge. In another experiment voters were measured according to votes to support increases in school funding depending on the location of the voting station. Those located in schools were found to have more votes for increased funding.

This also works in reverse it was also found in an experment that when students were forced to walk slower they were 'primed' to think about the elderly.

Thoughts can be suggested, voting actions can be inflenced by images, locations, it is important that more people know and understand the way the brain works before more sinistergroups start to manipulate our thoughts.

Monday, January 14, 2013

Started to read above book by Paul Hendrickson. Very curious and different approach to biography. Will pick a photograph and then discuss in detail what was happening in life and the world in general. Has started to discuss the change in his style from incredibly sparse to slightly more loosely sparse. Hendrickson believes this was because of his new boat (called Pilar):

"I believe Pilar was a key part of the change, allowing him to go further out where you don't see shoreline."

About the blog

I have been writing this blog for over ten years. I tend to be quite eclectic in my range of interests and you will see that the subjects vary from Heaven by George Herbert to Curious George. The main reason I started writing this blog was to get my view across that the reviews we see in the papers come from the literary establishment. Writers who review books by their friends and this does not mean that the reviews are accurate. Along the way I got distracted, I even added some of my artwork but I hope you enjoy reading it. My favourite post is from January 2005 -English literature and geology do mix!- You should search it out.